NOTES

ALFRED'S OROSIUS.

The two exceedingly valuable elucidations which the geography of King
Alfred relating to Germany (intercalated in the royal author's
translation of Orosius), has received from your learned contributors MR.
R.T. HAMPSON (Vol. i., p. 257.) and MR. S.W. SINGER (Vol. i., p. 313.)
induce me to offer some new views on the same subject. From my having
passed a long series of years in the countries described, and read and
examined all that continental authors, as well as Englishmen, have
written or conjectured on the subject, I trust that my opinions, though
differing from all hitherto received, may not be unworthy the attention
of these gentlemen, and of your other numerous subscribers. I shall,
however, at present, not to exceed the necessary limitation of your
articles, restrict myself to a consideration of the very disputed
_Cwenas_ and the _Cwen-sae_, which both the gentlemen have not alluded
to.

The universal agreement amongst the commentators (with the two solitary
exceptions I shall hereafter mention), by which this sea is taken for
the White Sea, is diverting, and has been the primary source of many of
their errors, and of that most monster one, by which Othere's narrative
has been made the relation of a voyage round the North Cape to
Archangel. It is difficult to say who may have first broached the
brilliant idea. Spelmann's annotators, his alumni Oxonienses of
University College, seem to have left the matter without much
consideration, in which they were pretty servilely followed by Bussæus,